CygWin/gcc-3.4.4 updates.
I replaced my cygwin compiler with 3.4.4, did a make clean of plib, simgear,
and flightgear, then did a make install of all three. With the included changes,
everything builds fine, and runs fine.
Attached is a patch to the airport data storage that I would like committed
after review if acceptable. Currently the storage of airports mapped by ID
is by locally created objects - about 12 Meg or so created on the stack if
I am not mistaken. I've changed this to creating the airports on the heap,
and storing pointers to them - see FGAirportList.add(...) in
src/Airports/simple.cxx. I believe that this is probably better practice,
and it's certainly cured some strange problems I was seeing when accessing
the airport data with some gps unit code. Changes resulting from this have
cascaded through a few files which access the data - 11 files are modified
in all. Melchior and Durk - you might want to test this and shout if there
are problems since the metar and traffic code are probably the biggest
users of the airport data. I've also added a fuzzy search function that
returns the next matching airport code in ASCII sequence in order to
support gps units that have autocompletion of partially entered codes.
More generally, the simple airport class seems to have grown a lot with the
fairly recent addition of the parking, runway preference and schedule time
code. It is no longer just an encapsulation of the global airport data
file, and has grown to 552 bytes in size when unpopulated (about 1/2 a K!).
My personal opinion is that we should look to just store the basic data in
apt.dat for all global airports in a simple airport class, plus globally
needed data (metar available?), and then have the traffic, AI and ATC
subsystems create more advanced airports for themselves as needed in the
area of interest. Once a significant number of airports worldwide have
ground networks and parking defined, it will be impractical and unnecessary
to store them all in memory. That's just a thought for the future though.
I just heard from John Wojnaroski that you and he are going to work on getting
a flightgear demo machine up for the linux expo thursday and Friday. John
indicated that he would very much like to get a CVS version with the new
traffic code up and running before the expo.
a single apt.dat.gz file which is in the native X-Plane format.
To do this I wrote a front end loader than builds the airport and runway
list. Some of the changes I needed to make had a cascading effect, so there
are minor naming changes scattered throughout the code.
KEMT (w120n30 scenery), and you will have to set the property
/sim/ai-traffic/enabled to 'true' to see the other plane (and tune
comm1 to 121.2 to hear the other plane's radio calls).
system. A chap from Germany called Alexander Kappes (cc'd) got
in touch with me a few weeks ago and has written the start of
Approach control. At the moment tuning in to a valid approach
frequency (Dortmund or East Midlands) should result in vectors to
a spot about 3 miles from the active runway, and a telling off if you
stray too far from the correct course, in the console window. He
seems to know what he's doing so expect this to improve rapidly!!
I've added a rudimentry AI manager and a hardwired Cessna at
KEMT on the runway - I'll remove it before the next release if I don't
have it flying by then. There seems to be an issue with framerate
which drops alarmingly when looking at it - I've a feeling that I've
possibly created several Cessnas on top of each other, but am not
sure.
